Big Spring bank robbery, January 7, 2004
There has been a rash of bank robberies in the area, the most recent one having been in Abilene on Wednesday, June 2nd.
And, on Thursday two individuals, Oscar Ibarra and his brother, Irad Ibarra, were arrested. According to the Abilene Reporter-News Oscar Ibarra admitted to Wednesday's robbery in Abilene and to robbing one bank in Big Spring, two banks in Lubbock and four banks in Odessa. Here's more:
Abilene police and FBI officials say the brothers were both involved in Wednesday's robbery at the American State Bank at 3402 N. 1st St. More than $2,500 was stolen, according to a statement filed by the FBI in federal court.According to the FBI, a lone bank robber entered the bank and gave one of the tellers a note indicating he had a gun and ordered her to hand him the money in her drawer. The robber was seen leaving the scene in an older model tan extended cab pickup that also carried another man.
About an hour later, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers saw a truck matching the description in the parking lot of the Flying J Plaza in Tye. Tye is just west of Abilene in Taylor County.
Regular readers of this blog might recall my previous observations about the inferior quality of the photos apparently taken by bank surveillance cameras. If anyone wants to revisit those items they can be found here, here, here, here, and here. Note that the robbers were caught because a witness got a glimpse of the get-away truck and provided that information to police. The information was quickly dispersed, and the DPS spotted the truck. As far as I can tell the surveillance photos did not help.
Television news coverage - I taped the three local tv 10:00 o'clock news shows last night (Friday) specifically to see what they said about the bank robbers' capture. Channel 7 skipped it entirely. But to be fair, the arrest took place on Thursday, and they may have covered it then. Big 2 News had a brief but adequate coverage. Channel 9 covered the details sufficiently but went overboard with efforts to humanize the story by having a reporter knock on Mr. Ibarra's door and report that no one was home. And their interviews with some neighbors revealed that they, predictably, thought that it was a good thing that the robbers were caught. Oh come on. What else could they say? But, I suppose someone somewhere has determined that that is what viewers want to see.
(Apologies to those who are fluent in Spanish and to Ms. Miller, my high school Spanish teacher. "El Banco Bandido" is not the best word usage, but it just has a ring to it to these Anglo ears.)
No, it was your exposure of him on this blog that got him! That, and his nonstop bank robbing.
You've been all over this one, kudos to you!
Posted by: GruntDoc | June 06, 2004 at 04:54 AM
Life is something that everyone should try at least once.
Posted by: toys | April 18, 2005 at 05:53 PM
Life is a zoo in a jungle.
Posted by: pen | August 03, 2005 at 03:38 AM